The High Court has dismissed a personal injuries claim brought over a schoolyard fall at Loughegar National School in County Westmeath which left a nine-year-old pupil with a fractured and dislocated elbow.
Amanda Shakira Dinnegan was in third class when she fell during a break on May 12th, 2015. She underwent two surgical procedures and intensive physiotherapy. She later recovered full function in her left elbow but was left with surgical scarring.
Her case at trial was that she had tripped on a raised steel pedestrian grating while running on a concrete path. A defect in the grating was identified during an engineering inspection in July 2018.
However, Mr Justice Paul Coffey found that Ms Dinnegan had not proved that the grating caused her accident.
The judge placed significant weight on the history of the claim. When proceedings were first issued in 2017, the case was that another pupil had tripped her during a race. That account remained in the pleadings until an engineering inspection more than three years after the accident, when the grating was identified as the alleged cause.
Ms Dinnegan said she had initially been confused and had always known she tripped on the grating. The court found that explanation unsatisfactory and noted that her mother’s evidence did not support the claim that the grating had been identified earlier.
The court preferred the evidence of special needs assistant Mary Kenny, who said she saw Ms Dinnegan getting up near the top of a set of concrete steps. CCTV footage, which the judge accepted as recording the incident, was consistent with Ms Kenny’s account and showed the fall occurring well away from the allegedly defective section of grating.
The judge found that the fall occurred on the concrete path near the steps without any identifiable external cause. He also held that general supervision was in place and that an ordinary fall during children’s play did not, without more, establish liability against the school.
The claim was therefore dismissed.